


Intoxicate Me, I'm a Lush

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Old Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 14:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15665466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: Harry's still recovering from his coma when the others go to deal with Valentine, indulging in a bit of gentle retail therapy before accidentally finding himself getting quite unreasonable in a shop full of bath bombs when the signal goes off.





	Intoxicate Me, I'm a Lush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Winchester666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchester666/gifts).



> I don't even know how the conversation started but dorkasaurus-spiritus and I were talking earlier like "what if Harry went wild in Lush instead of Kentucky?" WHAT THEN?? This is what. I can only claim 50% of the blame.

Merlin doesn't sound very impressed. "Harry."

"I'm not talking to you," Harry says bitterly, even though he's literally talking to him to say so.

"You're supposed to be resting. Catastrophic head injuries need time and care. Which, by the way, you know perfectly well considering you've had about nine hundred."

"You've given my mission away. I should be back in action by now."

"Well, you're not. I trust the doctors' word on your recovery a lot more than yours." There's a pause, then Merlin says incredulously, "Wait, are you on Oxford Street? Harry, _go home_. You've been in a bloody coma for weeks."

"Indeed I have, which must be why my craving for a Big Mac is so strong." He holds the empty box up in front of his glasses for Merlin to see, then throws it in the next bin he passes and sucks the last spilled drop of sauce off his thumb. "How are the children getting on in Siberia? You could tell me that, at least."

"Sorry, Harry." He does actually sound sorry, which somehow makes it all even more irritating. "Classified. You're not even supposed to know we're in Siberia."

Is it possible to die from exasperation with one's spouse? Harry feels much more likely to die from that sometime soon than a piddly little head injury. "For god's sake, who am I going to tell? Maria in Lush?"

"Try not to bankrupt us in there, alright?" Merlin says, resigned at last after years of resistance. "I have to go. And Harry, listen - this could still go awfully wrong. Please, please make it quick if you're buying something, then get out of there and _go home_. You, I mean specifically you, need to be away from people. Just in case. You're capable of so much more damage than everyone else."

"Just in case," Harry repeats, though he can't quite bring himself to inject it with the sarcasm he usually might. He didn't see how Percival died or exactly what happened to him in the minutes before, but he saw Merlin's lingering reaction to it when he got home white-faced and silent and wouldn't let go of Harry's hand for hours. "Alright. How long until shit and fan collide?"

"We'll land soon. Infiltrate the place, take down his satellite - let's say you've got forty minutes. Call it thirty to be safe. That's long enough even for you, surely?"

"I'll hurry. Good luck, Merlin."

And he honestly does intend to hurry, too. It's just that they know him by now in there, and they adore him, and they fuss over him like he's royalty every time he strides through the door like he's walking through the gates of heaven and starts gathering armfuls of things to sniff. Christy pushes on his shoulders until he sits obligingly on the stool she's got for him; Fatima starts rubbing some kind of cocoa butter lotion onto the back of his hand as she's giving him updates on the Tinder date he offered advice on last week; Bobby runs his fingers longingly through Harry's hair and launches into his usual enthusiastic monologue about shampoo bars; Emily pops a punchy little clove and orange mouthwash tablet between his lips to try, and offers him a cup of coffee with an eyebrow waggle that means 'and a tot of whisky in it' because they're basically family by now and they know him; Maria picks through the bath bombs until she finds one that matches the luscious cherry pink stripe in the tie he's wearing - a touch too feisty for work, but one he favours whenever he's banished on sick leave - and presents it to him as though it's a Fabergé egg.

And, yes, maybe Merlin was actually right, and he is struggling with the after-effects of being blown up and spending weeks in a coma, because he'd never usually be quite this careless about keeping track of time. He's late a fairly rude amount when there's nothing at stake, but perfectly capable of keeping an eye on the clock when it's truly necessary. Usually, at least.

Harry's listening avidly to Bobby and Fatima's passionate sales pitches on their favourite bath bombs when he feels his phone start vibrating in his pocket.

 _Oh shit_ , he thinks in absolute dismay when everybody else starts checking their phones too, confused by the unfamiliar rising tone sounding on all of them in unison.

"OUT!" he yells suddenly, flapping his hands at all the people close enough to him to be shooed, and then rushing back to round up the stragglers and shoo them out as well. He's very good at sounding commanding when he wants to and luckily they all obey him seemingly without thinking, wandering out onto the street and looking back at him in confusion as he slides the doors shut and flicks the bolts to lock them.

It all happens in a matter of moments and he's fighting himself by the end, struggling to finish the last couple of bolts when everything in his body is giving him absurd, nightmarish instructions like "smash your fist through that glass" and "kick that young woman hard enough to impale all her organs on the shattered remains of her spine". Nearly everything after that is a blank, and would have remained that way if he'd managed to destroy the security cameras as effectively as he destroyed everything else.

Merlin hacks in to steal the footage later and they watch it on the big control room screens - for science, he says, but he's got the same dirty excited look in his eye that he gets when he's watching Lucy Liu beat people up in films, and Harry thinks in bewilderment that if this is all it took for Merlin to get over his weird snobbish hatred of Lush then maybe they could have arranged something earlier.

A platter of bath bombs is first, overturned with a neat swipe of Harry's arm so they all crash to the floor in a noxious cloud of dust and glitter that colours his trousers orange to halfway up his shins. He swings a vicious roundhouse kick at a pyramid of stacked soap, sending the cakes flying in every direction, then whirls around still holding the tray the bath bombs had been piled on and smashes it into the nearest shelf, sending little pots skittering over the tiled floor. His fist, clenched so tightly that the skin is stretched white over his knuckles, drives into another soap pyramid, scattering Lavender Vida Loca every which way and then grabbing several to pelt at more bath bombs like he's trying to win a goldfish on the coconut shy at the village fete.

"You see that little blue one?" Harry asks. Merlin makes a wordless, throaty, shamefully aroused sort of noise instead of a proper reply. "It's called 'Little Bottle of Calm'. Didn't really work, did it?"

Things are fizzing now, popping and melting all around the shop in the various bowls and sinks filled with water for demonstrations and testers. In his apparent wish to utterly destroy the place, his flailing foot finds the rim of a bowl on the way to kicking over a set of shelves, and floods the floor in front of him. Rainbows of bath bombs effervesce around his feet, bubbles foaming up his shoes and staining the bottom of his grey trousers. He looks just about to launch himself at a huge mirror across the room when he manages to step on a melting bit of soap and his foot rockets out from under him in the most ridiculous, cartoonish way possible, flipping him upside down and crashing his head hard against the edge of the counter as he falls.

Now the Harry on the screen is no longer moving, Merlin seems to be having an easier time of breathing. "If you hadn't gone and knocked yourself out - again - there's a reprieve coming up in a minute when the signal was briefly stopped. Probably a good thing you were out cold - again. I think the people outside forgot you were still in there. If they'd remembered, if they'd seen you just lying there, they probably would have broken through and killed you when the signal came back."

"You needn't sound quite so pleased about it," Harry grumbles.

Merlin stops the footage and closes the window now there's nothing more to leer at, and spins his chair around to face Harry. "I'm not pleased about _that_. Stand up a minute."

Harry stands up from his place perched on the corner of the desk - then follows the direction of Merlin's eyes to see a perfect, pert little glittery bum print left behind on the polished surface.

"You're absolutely covered," Merlin says, sounding borderline gleeful about it. "You look ridiculous. There's even glitter on--" He stops, gesturing instead, and Harry self-consciously touches the new bandage on his sore head, coming away with sparkly fingertips. " _How_? You weren't even wearing that when you fell over."

"Look, you might as well stop laughing at me, because this stuff _will not_ be contained. If this is my life now, it's yours too. Glitter in your underpants. Glitter in your lunchtime sandwiches. Glitter in the hankie every time you sneeze. We'll be having brittle Viagra sex in forty years and still find a rogue speck hiding behind your bollocks."

That shuts him up, finally. Good.

"You do smell nice," Merlin says grudgingly. He reaches for Harry's hand, turning it over palm-up and bringing it to his nose to inhale deeply at the rainbow-stained shirt cuff. "I'm glad you're alright."

Harry twists his hand, fingertips brushing up Merlin's cheekbone to gently cup his face like a treasure. "I'm glad you are, too. Congratulations on saving the world."

"Roxy and Eggsy deserve it much more than me."

"Nonsense, it was teamwork." His other hand joins the first, and Merlin's hands go to his elbows to hold him steady when Harry does an awkward little shuffle to sit astride his lap on the wheely chair. "I'm glad it was them." It goes unsaid - _Percival would be proud of her_ \- but it's hanging there heavily in the silence.

Then Merlin snarls, "Oh, for fuck's sake!" and Harry realises to his immense pleasure that he's smeared glitter all over Merlin's trousers with his bottom.


End file.
